So the time had come to devise a plan on how I was going to get there. I was determined not to fly, as overland desert travel had been my whole reason for coming to Alice in the first place, so I started looking for a lift.

So Franzi and I picked up our van and decided to have a starting point photo at Anzac Hill in Alice Springs. It was Remembrance Day too, a coincidence which I hadn’t realised until we were up there. By the time we had packed up it was gone 11am…a bit later than we’d hoped…and after driving on the Stuart Highway until sunset we ended up at Pootnoura rest area, 76kms north of Coober Pedy, for which we’d been aiming.
We arrived before much was open but entertained ourselves by nosing around an underground church until such times that we could visit the museum.

And the next day, after I had my own hairy negotiations through Melbourne city centre, with it’s bloody trams, we finally made it. 2351.3kms on the clock, and absolutely knackered! And it was straight back to reality…no more campervan…on the advice of a local taxi driver we used trollies to transport our stuff to the nearest tram stop, and we headed into the city. A somewhat startling experience after all that nothingness.